


Guilt

by goldarrow



Series: Timeline!verse [2]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 01:34:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20399497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldarrow/pseuds/goldarrow
Summary: Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt. - Plautus





	Guilt

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Primeval belongs to Impossible Pictures, not me. Unfortunately. Sigh. I mean no harm, I make no profit except satisfaction.

They say that guilt can poison everything. They're right. 

I thought when I saw Ryan that day in the infirmary that I had it all. 

But I didn’t, not really. Everyone was trying but they all expected me to be him and I couldn’t be, I just couldn’t. All the reports I read about him, all the joyful memories these people have of him have all been like acid in my gut. 

Even Ryan. Dear God, Ryan. The love I’d lost and thought I’d got back, and it hurt so much to know he truly wanted someone else. That I just couldn’t be enough for him. 

Cutter said to let the guilt go, that none of it happened here. But that's just the point isn't it? I'm living his life, a life I didn't earn. And it's been tearing me apart.

xXx 

“Why the fuck do you keep doing things like that?” Ryan’s exasperation as he stomped through our front door slammed into me harder than a fist would have. 

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. It was all I could get out past my frozen throat. 

I’d done it again. 

My right arm was still weak and very painful, but the doctors had decided it was sufficiently healed for me to go out on operations when a tracker was needed, as long as I kept my activity to a minimum. And for the third time in a row, once I’d found the creature it had immediately made a break for freedom in just the wrong direction. This time, it had been heading directly toward Abby. So of course I just had to jump out to distract it, and in the process I managed to get myself tossed into some brambles. Abby was fine, the creature was herded back through the anomaly with the judicious application of bullets sprayed into the earth for steering, and I ended up with a lot of scratches, a poundingly painful arm, and an extremely pissed-off lover.

“Do you think my team is totally incompetent?” I could tell that Ryan was holding onto his temper by a thread. His jaw was clenched so tightly I feared for his teeth.

“No.” Oh, never. Having the Special Forces teams always at our backs in this timeline was wonderful.

“Then for fuck’s sake, why?” 

I think I must have flinched, because Ryan suddenly seemed to realise he was close to yelling at me. 

This time he spoke in a completely controlled voice. “Why?” 

“I don’t know.” I didn’t want to know. Just thinking about all of this made my head hurt as much as my heart and my arm.

“Yes, you do.” He stepped closer to me as I stood by the couch.

“Tell me.” He reached out. “Please.” He grasped my left shoulder.

He was holding me in a grip I wanted so badly to lean into. But I couldn’t.

I tried to explain what I didn’t really understand myself. “Because it’s the least I can do. Because they’re more valuable to the project than I am. Because I’m not good enough for you. Because I’m not him, and there’s no way I will ever be able to live up to him.”

Ryan’s hand dropped.

“Jesus.” His voice was so sad it made me want to cry. “If you think you haven’t paid enough, if your guilt over something that happened ten years ago is so strong that you think that being treated like shit for months, then still being ready and willing to die for them, isn’t enough to expunge it, then maybe you’re right. Maybe this won’t work.” The emphasis he placed on the word die made me flinch involuntarily. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Maybe there is no such thing as a second chance.”

He walked out of the room, leaving me to sink down onto the couch, feeling sick. Well, I guessed I should be happy right now. I’d fucked up my first life, now I’d managed to fuck up the second one, too. I leaned my head back and stared at the ceiling for a while, not thinking, too numb to even feel. I must have passed out, because the next thing I knew I woke up lying on my injured right arm, with my neck twisted at an angle I would have believed impossible if I hadn’t somehow managed it.

I levered myself up and gasped, wondering if the throbbing pain in my arm and shoulder was actually going to make me vomit. I fished around in my trouser pocket and succeeded in pulling out the tablets that were my constant companions right now. ‘One every four hours as needed’ the instructions said. Fuck that. I shook out two and choked them down dry before noticing that the dregs of my morning cup of coffee, abandoned for this morning’s anomaly shout, were still on the table. A few swallows of cold liquid, a shudder, and I was ready to face the consequences. Again.

xXx

In my old timeline, Ryan’s death had put paid to the Special Forces troops being used as our backup. The Powers That Be back there had decided that civilians running SF sorties wasn’t on, and when the Home Office wouldn’t allow the military to run the ARC, the MoD had pulled out except for special missions okayed by the upper echelons. Which left us with only sporadic backup, and me with frequent opportunities to try to atone for my adultery. I never succeeded.

And maybe that was the entire problem. No matter what I did it wasn’t enough. Because it never could be enough. 

I found Ryan in the kitchen putting the kettle on. I had no idea how to talk about what I was still trying to work out inside myself. I tried to tell him that. Tried to explain how I wasn’t anything like his - their - Stephen Hart.

He shook his head, no longer looking so sad. “Don’t you understand? You are Stephen Hart. You are the same man. You have the same mind, the same courage, the same heart. The only difference between the two of you is this guilt you won’t let go of.”

I was trying to believe it. Trying so hard, but there was still a tone of defeat in his voice that I could blame myself for. I could feel the sense of inadequacy raising its twisted head to leer at me again, this time just because I was daring to try to forgive myself.

Ryan reached out and tugged me close, speaking directly into my ear. “Stephen. You are not any less than him. You are him. Christ, I see him in you every day. And I see you choke yourself off every time you realise you’re starting to be happy. And it hurts me.”

He pulled back to look into my eyes. God knows what he saw there, because in his eyes I saw pain and a dawning horror. “Stephen?” he whispered.

I could feel myself starting to withdraw. It was the oddest sensation. Everything around me was pulling inward as if I was rushing backwards down a tunnel. When my knees gave out, I felt him grab me and push me onto the kitchen stool. 

“Fuck.” He waved his hand in front of my eyes, which for some reason refused to follow it. “How many of those sodding tablets did you take?”

I thought hard. It shouldn’t be that difficult to remember, should it? “Um, two. Only two.” I was quite proud of myself for remembering. “That’s all I could force down dry.”

“Dry?” Ryan’s voice wavered. “Stephen, you took one at the site, and another one in the car just before we came in! That makes four in the last hour!” 

“Oh. I forgot.” Another fuck-up. Wonderful. Everything started wobbling, so Ryan propped me against his shoulder.

He pulled out his phone and speed-dialled Ditzy, shaking his head ruefully. “Christ, I keep forgetting what those things do to you. Loopy doesn’t even begin to cover it.” 

After a quick conversation, he put the phone away with a slightly evil grin. “Well, I don’t have to take you in, but you’re not going to like the next few minutes.”

He was right. The next few minutes are another memory I’d prefer to expunge. Once I’d got rid of as much of the medicine still in my stomach as possible, he left me curled up unhappily in our bed, muzzily contemplating my seemingly never-ending sins.

Ryan’s cheerful voice interrupted my hamster-wheel thoughts a few minutes later. “Cuppa tea, then some toast.”

I’m pretty sure I botched the baleful look I tried to give him because he just grinned at me. 

“Get this inside you, and we’ll talk about more solid food later.”

He sat me up without straining at all, which made me even grumpier. How strong can one man be using only one arm? 

“Drink. Eat. Now.”

I looked at him, and this time I could really see because I was starting to track a little better. He appeared more settled: less angry, less tense, less fearful. Huh. I wondered what had done that, then I remembered, very hazily, him pulling out his phone again after he’d tucked me under the duvet.

“Ditzy to the rescue?” I asked, my throat still raspy from throwing up.

He chuckled. “Yeah. He reminded me that you’ve been through emotional hell for ten years, and physical hell for a month, so how the fuck can I expect you to heal in two weeks?” 

Reaching out to grab the cup I was about to drop, he continued, “Stephen. I know I’m crap at talking about feelings. We both are. But I meant what I said. You are my Stephen. I don’t think you realise just how much you are like him - or how much he was like you.” He looked away for a moment. “I - I read your reports. The ones you gave us when you first arrived.” Looking back into my eyes, he smiled. “Stephen, most of the things he did, you did, too. What makes you think the two of you are so different, that he was so much better?”

I couldn’t answer. All I could do is reach down and start crumbling toast. Ryan stopped me, gripping my hand.

“Then I’ll tell you why you think that,” he said firmly, tugging until I looked at him again. “Because you think that he did things because he was heroic, but you did them because you were trying to atone for sins. That his reasons were good but yours were bad. What you’re not seeing is that you both did the same things. Why you think you did them is irrelevant. Anyone reading the reports about you in your timeline would be thinking the same thing about you as you’re thinking reading the reports about him in this one. Tell me something: did you only help your friends because you felt guilty? Would you have left them to their own devices if you didn’t?”

I pulled my hand away, offended. “No! Of course not! They’re my friends. . . Oh.”

Making sure that both the cup and plate were safe, he sat on the bed beside me, pulling me as close as he could without hurting my arm. How did he know just how much pressure I could take? Oh, Special Forces. Probably had lots of practice and I really didn’t want to think about that either. Fuck. I added it to the list of ‘things to lock into the mind-cupboard’. 

I returned to the world again to find him watching me quizzically.

“You back?” he asked.

All I could do was nod. Shit, talk about ADD: I seemed to have the attention span of a hyperactive flea on amphetamines.

He laughed. “Ditzy said you’d fade in and out for a while. Don’t worry about it.” Grinning, he added, “I think it’s funny. Your eyes go all blurry and you get a really goofy look on your face.”

I wanted to thump him, but the mind-picture I got from that description just made me chuckle instead. “Great. Goofy. That’s really nice.”

Ryan turned to face me fully, serious again. “So, here’s the deal. I loved him - the Stephen here.”

When he paused, I had to resist the urge to look around for the falling hatchet. 

“And I love you,” he said, just as quietly, just as sincerely, tossing the hatchet over the hedge with those four words. “I know that your timeline experiences have made you much less trusting, much less open. But just occasionally, I’ve seen that same trust, that same openness, that same joy shine through the walls you’ve built around yourself. And that’s truly the only difference between the two of you. He lived his life with joy, you’ve lived yours with sadness.” He paused a moment before continuing, “Will you let me help you find the joy in life again?” He leaned forward and kissed me, starting gently and gradually letting the passion leak through, until I was left shivering with desire and gasping for breath.

Could I refuse that? Could I, hell! I think maybe he knew me better than I knew myself. At that moment, after not just hearing, but truly listening to his words, something dark inside me finally shrivelled and died, leaving an empty core that I was determined to fill with light.

“Yes. Yes, please.” Those were the last words I managed to speak for quite a while. Not that I was silent, not at all. 

But moans and whimpers and possibly even yells probably don’t count.

End


End file.
